revenge of the pod people

[freckles_and_doubt]

Right, so this is the bit where mac1235 gets to gloat a lot. I've been joyously bouncing around my gym routine to the strains of David Bowie from an Ipod for the last year and a bit. At the start of this process I professed myself happy with the Ipod and the functions it performed. This contentment has, alas, eroded over time, until I am Officially Not Happy. This is for various reasons:
1. ITunes. The assemblage of geeks who roasted me for my professed ITunes contentment was, alas, correct: the way that ITunes locks up your music is unacceptably fascist. I'd like an MP3 player to be a viable way of porting music from home to office without me having to rip each CD twice. Phooey.
2. Size. While I like the robust metallic finish of the IPod, it's actually too large for convenient gym portage - it lives in my pocket, and at intervals yanks out the earphone plug with the sadistic panache of a practical joker. Tchah.
3. Angst. Said IPod doesn't actually belong to me, it's a loan from dragonroost, and it's a tossup whether he recalls it before I accidentally drop it into the pool at the gym and have to flee the country. Oops.

So, for extra credit, and writing on one side of the paper only, please specify and outline the features, pleasing or otherwise, of your recommended MP3 player for mainly gym use, with reasons for your choice. Topics may include, but are not limited to, interface, software, price, size, style and availability. Extra marks for dissing ITunes.

Last Night I Dreamed: weird SCA dreams, including a beautifully-costumed event held by my local Shire on a tennis court in Harare, and a subsequent sea voyage on a tall ship crewed entirely by hairy SCA fighters. Awoke strangely exhausted.

Comments

[tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com]

I mourn my Sony Ericsson W800i. It was orange and white, a most unfortunate colour combination but I loved it nevertheless because of its huge MP3-playing capabilities. It came with easy-to-use software to transfer files. The big plus was that I could get into my car, plug in my earphones, listen to a story and take calls in traffic if necessary. However I concede that this is not a plus at gym, people who take calls on their cellphones at gym look pretentious and can be irritating.

The only problem I ever had with the MP3 player function was a tendency to go all funny on me if the phone suddenly lost reception. The player would then reset to wherever I had last started listening.

Concentration in traffic is definitely an issue but I find talking on cellphones is even more distracting. It is also harder to tell a person you can't talk to them right now because you are focusing on traffic, than it is to just shut a story out. Sometimes I find traffic takes all my attention and I have missed some of the story, then I just rewind a little.

The little MP3 player I have now is called Alvin the Chipmunk because of its carrying case, a Macdonalds toy. It is tiny and has great sound quality but I do not know how to use it and that is my final word on the topic. It has 1 gig of memory I believe. If you want to borrow it to try it out, do let me know, you would be most welcome. (I am rather using my current phone, at least I can fit a couple of chapters on it.)

Also, we have Pratchett, Colfer, some recent McCaffrey and the Eragon audio books. And Philip Pullman too I believe.